Dive Brief:
- Texas’ school choice program is facing legal challenges from Muslim families who allege Islamic schools were excluded from a list of preapproved private schools that students could attend with state money.
- In lawsuits filed March 1 and March 11, the families contend that hundreds of other private schools, including Christian schools, were approved. The program allows families to apply for state funds to cover private school tuition and related costs such as enrollment fees, tutoring and uniforms.
- The application deadline for the Texas Education Freedom Accounts Program ends March 17, after which the lawsuit says plaintiffs — who are Muslim parents and Islamic schools — will lose out on access to state funding for the entire 2026–27 school year. The plaintiffs are suing under the First and Fourteenth Amendments and are seeking immediate temporary relief prior to the March 17 deadline.
Dive Insight:
As school choice programs proliferate nationwide, education policy and school choice experts are eyeing Texas' rollout as one of the largest-scale implementations yet.
State law created the program last year, and its first application window opened Feb. 4. Awards to families are expected to be announced in April, and TEFA money can then be used beginning this fall
Up to $10,474 is available for every approved private school student for the 2026-27 school year, according to the Texas Education Agency.
The families suing the Texas officials overseeing the program argue that not only have Islamic schools been denied approval despite their eligibility, but that Islamic schools were removed from the approved list of schools without notice or explanation.
"Defendants have refused to let K through 12 Islamic schools through the door to TEFA participation, while holding the door open to thousands of other similarly situated private schools across Texas," the March 11 lawsuit says. "Because Islamic schools — unlike other religious schools — are excluded from Defendants’ preapproved-school list, parents cannot select them, and schools cannot participate."
The March 11 lawsuit was filed against Kelly Hancock, acting comptroller of public accounts for Texas, and Mary Stout, program director of TEFA.
The March 1 lawsuit was brought against Paxton and Mike Morath, Texas' education commissioner, in addition to Hancock.
According to the March 1 lawsuit, as early as December 2025 — shortly after private schools began applying for TEFA eligibility — Hancock publicly stated concerns about "Islamic and Chinese ties" among applicants and signaled his intent to block or scrutinize schools with connections to Islamic organizations.
"Recent findings have raised significant legal and taxpayer protection concerns," Hancock wrote in a Dec. 12 letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. In that letter, Hancock asked if he could legally disqualify schools from TEFA based on ties to a “foreign terrorist organization” and a “transnational criminal organization."
Potential TEFA applicants, he said, were based at an address that hosted events organized by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation's largest Muslim rights civil advocacy group.
In November, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott designated CAIR as both a “foreign terrorist organization” and a “transnational criminal organization.”
CAIR, in its latest civil rights report released March 10, in turn blasted Gov. Abbott's decisions as Islamophobic.
"Texas Governor Abbott and other state officials used the power of their offices to frame Muslim-led institutions and advocacy as uniquely suspicious and threatening," it said. "Their targets included an Islamic center, a proposed mosque-centered development, Muslim burial practices, Islamic mediation services, Islamic schools, and CAIR itself."
The plaintiff in the March 1 lawsuit — a Muslim father of two children — claimed in his complaint that Texas leaders' "actions also stigmatize and demean Plaintiff, his children, and the Muslim community by officially declaring that Islamic schools are presumptively linked to terrorism and are unworthy of the same public support extended to non-Islamic schools."
The complaint says that the plaintiff faces a loss of over $20,000 per year in TEFA dollars for his two children.
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